About Face 3: The Essentials of Interaction Design

This completely updated volume presents the effective and practical tools you need to design great desktop applications, Web 2.0 sites, and mobile devices. You‘ll learn the principles of good product behavior and gain an understanding of Cooper‘s Goal–Directed Design method, which involves everything from conducting user research to defining your product using personas and scenarios. Ultimately, you‘ll acquire the knowledge to design the best possible digital products and services.

New to this edition:

• New content relevant to the popularization of new Web technologies and mobile platforms
  
• The continuation of a general shift in emphasis from Windows desktop software to other platforms and domains including appliances, web applications, consumer electronics and mobile devices
  
• Updated examples to reflect current state–of–the–art interfaces and additional case studies where appropriate
  
• Updated graphics, icons, layout, and cover to speak compellingly to a more design–literate audience
  
• Updates to Cooper‘s immensely popular Goal–Directed Design methodology
  
• Updates to reflect new thinking in interface, interaction and product design methods
  
• A reorganization to make it more accessible as a reference book

From the back cover:

When the first edition of About Face was published in 1995, the idea of designing products based on human goals was a revolutionary concept. Thanks to the work of Alan Cooper and other pioneers, interaction design is now widely recognized as a unique and vital discipline, but our work is far from finished.

This completely updated volume presents the effective and practical tools you need to design great desktop applications, Web 2.0 sites, and mobile devices. This book will teach you the principles of good product behavior and introduce you to Cooper‘s Goal–Directed Design method, from conducting user research to defining your product using personas and scenarios. In short, About Face 3 will show you how to design the best possible digital products and services.

About the Author:

For over 30 years Alan Cooper has been a pioneer of the modern computing era. His groundbreaking work in software design and construction has influenced a generation of programmers and business people—and helped a generation of users. He is best known as the "Father of Visual Basic," inventor of personas, and founder of Cooper, the leading design consultancy.

As Director of Design R&D at Cooper, Robert Reimann led dozens of design projects and helped develop many of the methods described in About Face 3. Currently, he is Manager of User Experience at Bose Corporation and President of IxDA, the Interaction Design Association.

David Cronin is Director of Interaction Design at Cooper, where he‘s led the design of products for such diverse users as surgeons, museum visitors, online shoppers, automobile drivers, financial analysts, and the elderly.